April 6, 2020, Newark, NJ – Tomas Gregorio, the senior vice president and general manager of the New Jersey Innovation Institute’s (NJII) Healthcare Division announced today that he has accepted a newly created position as the Chief Innovation and Technology Officer at University Hospital, in Newark.

“Hospitals are vital to the well-being of their communities, and as New Jersey’s only public hospital and the largest provider of healthcare for uninsured people in the state, University Hospital plays an outsized role,” Gregorio said. “This is especially the case now, as our community faces the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In his new role, Gregorio will leverage the experience and insight gained during his 30-year career to enable and drive innovation that empowers the workforce, transforms business operations and improves the patient experience.

“I’m excited to have Tom join our team,” said Dr. Shereef Elnahal, President and CEO of University Hospital. “Leveraging digital capabilities and promoting interoperability are absolutely vital in today’s world, where health risks can spread so quickly. At University Hospital, we are embracing technology to ensure that we are providing the best possible care to our patients every day. Tom’s depth of expertise and proven experience leading complex innovation and technology initiatives will allow us to continue to elevate our efforts.”

NJII is a corporation of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the Healthcare Division has grown substantially under Gregorio’s leadership. From its first full year of operations in 2015 to today, revenue has increased nearly 50-fold – going from $540,000 to $25 million last fiscal year.

“Tom was the first employee of NJII when we launched in July 2014. Under his leadership the Healthcare Division quickly grew to be our top performing group across every dimension of performance,” said Donald Sebastian, NJII president and chief innovation officer. “Tom grasped the model of spanning the gap between commercial and academic operations and built a service portfolio that is transforming hospital and physician healthcare to be data driven and achieve the seemingly impossible – higher quality, lower cost and increased access. We will miss his drive and leadership but take comfort in the fact that he will remain a strong partner in his new role and that he leaves behind a well-trained team that will carry on the important initiatives that he launched over the last six years.”

While at NJII Gregorio oversaw the division’s Garden Practice Transformation Network, which improved the health of nearly 14 million patients by employing evidence-based best practices and drove $180 million in cost savings through increased efficiency.

His work establishing the New Jersey Health Information Network on behalf of the New Jersey Department of Health helped provide a secure infrastructure for the exchange of patient data by connecting all 71 in-state hospitals with more than 6,000 physicians and more than a hundred other specialty treatment providers.

He also helped launch Healthcare Innovation Solutions (HCIS), the Healthcare Division’s for-profit subsidiary, which has helped thousands of physicians across the country navigate the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Merit-Based Incentive Payment Program.

“I have loved my time at NJII and the incredible people that work here.” Gregorio said. “My new role alongside Dr. Elnahal will let me continue pushing for quality improvement and interoperability on the inside while embracing the cutting-edge technology vital to innovative healthcare delivery. It’s an exciting opportunity, and even better, I’ll only be a few blocks from my colleagues at NJII, and the NJIT classrooms my son Max will be attending in the fall.”

Gregorio, who earned his MBA from NJIT, was honored with an Alumni Achievement Award from the university earlier this year. He has also been recognized many times over the years for his leadership by NJBiz, most recently having been included on the Healthcare Power 50, and has been named by ROI-NJ magazine as one of the state’s most influential healthcare leaders.